


spring/summer

by melforbes



Series: witch bedelia [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: someone dies but this is them so is that really a shock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 10:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: the least he can do in return is exsanguinate her competition





	spring/summer

**Author's Note:**

> okay. So. the lowdown.
> 
> i have had a hard year. this has been drafted for the entirety of that year. i intended to post it as a spring installment in march. given that it is now mid october when i'm posting it, i think it's safe to say that i missed that deadline! as a result, this has turned into a spring and summer installment. because i didn't intend on going past april or may back when i first plotted it, there's no mention of beltane whatsoever, and we're just going to go with that because i can't look at this anymore. they celebrated. you can use your imagination. i have certainly used mine! 
> 
> apologies for lateness and for generalized WTF factor. hope this is fun nonetheless

She has a strict rule: gardening clothes are to be taken off outside, then carried carefully into the laundry room. If any dirt or grime is brought into the house, it should be cleaned immediately, for otherwise, the cats will rub up into it, and inevitably, the whole house will be covered in dirt, and there’ll be soil stomped into the rugs, and her nice furniture will end up ruined. Sometimes, he wants to question such things, to ask why they both fear ruining the furniture with dirt when her pack of cats has yet to put a scratch on any of the hardwood, but questioning her would require doubting her authority, her experience, and he’s never going to do such things. If she wants dirt to be kept away from the carpets, he’ll keep dirt away from the carpets, taking off his mucked-up shirt before he comes inside, watching as she pulls off the dress she’s wearing, lifting it over her head so that all that’s left are her underwear and a sweaty camisole. He wants to take her picture like that someday, just skin and muscle and fat, hair tied back into a ponytail but coming apart in sweaty wisps around her face, feet bare and mucky on the soles. Though he loves her when she’s dressed up, wearing gowns for work with her hair curled and little heeled slippers on her feet, he may like her best when she’s wild and bare, unintimidated and strong, connected to every aspect of her sustenance, attached to all and detached from none. In a past life, he thinks she could have been on a farm, waking at dawn and slaughtering chickens with one hit from a blade. He loves her for her humanity, far surpassing that of most humans they know. He loves that she’ll tear her hands through soil and hunch over while planting only to take the utmost care when handling dirty clothes, making sure no dirt ends up littering the house. He loves her for the way she smiles when sprouts finally come up. He loves her for seeing the same in him, even if he feels he doesn’t deserve to be seen that way.

Now, the days have grown longer, and the sun comes out more often, clouds peeling away in favor of true spring. At first, she would wear big sweaters when she gardened, but now, she’s in light linen dresses, wearing a broad-rimmed sun hat and sunglasses as she works. Because he can, certainly not because she asked him to, he does most of the heavy-lifting for her. By the time they’re heading in for the afternoon, Sunday morning having come and gone, he’s thinking of making pesto with the last of the fresh spinach, maybe brewing kvass with the beets she just harvested. She has all of the beets in a basket, and he’ll take them inside and scrub them in the sink, cut them open, ferment them or make borscht with them or keep them in the root cellar for a rainy day. Though the day’s been hot, they heard on the radio that there’ll be rain this evening; he hopes it’ll pour just enough that the soil will get what it needs, that he’ll be able to curl up with her in their comfortable house together. This season feels strangely optimistic, how the world has come back to life after the long, cold winter; they watched together how the orchids on the windowsill in the kitchen turned from brown sticks to flowering buds, started opening the old windows in order to hear the chirping of birds and peepers and let in fresh air, dusted off every surface and brought a sensation of cleanliness into the house. As she’s done every spring, she’s started rereading _The Secret Garden_ in their downtime, sometimes reciting passages to him from her tattered copy while the cats stir at her feet. He feels as if they can grow now, and together. He feels as if there is more for both of them, and as if that _more_ can only bring good things.

They both have passports now, a pair of false ones to go along with her real one; at some point, he wants to take her to the sea, and they talk it all over at night, thinking of places to go, trying to determine when her work will slow down enough to permit a vacation. With the return of the outdoor farmer’s market in town, she works a booth on Saturday mornings each week, selling standard tinctures and concoctions, sometimes bringing fresh-baked bread or, if she’s had a slow workweek, a knit hat or two. Once they’re able to harvest abundantly from the garden, they’ll take fresh carrots to the market, but for now, they keep it to just her supplements and business cards, a phone number written down for commissions, handwritten-but-photocopied sheets about pricing offered to anyone who asks. A few weeks ago, they even brought a box of kittens, free to a good home, little white cats in a cardboard box lined with a flannel blanket. Though it had been a surprise to find a litter of kittens in the house in February, she had seemed nonetheless to expect such a thing to happen, as if such a thing had happened plenty of times before that it could never be a surprise again, and he could remember so clearly how she softened at the sight of it, at Niamh, the white cat who always seems to hide from him, in a corner of the upstairs study, close to one of the old heaters in the house, nursing five little kittens. Bedelia had rushed him out, saying that he would frighten them, that they would really only be comfortable with her because she’d been the lifelong caregiver of many of her cats, but still, he saw how she softened at the sight of the kittens, how she spoke so lightly and knew exactly how to care for them, how sweet and gentle she could be even after a long day of working and planting. When they went to bed that night, she’d been especially clingy, and he’d relished in it, in having her so close, in her slow, steady breathing alongside him.

But they lost one of the kittens, absolutely not because of neglect. He’s since read about it, the fading kitten syndrome, how some just can’t be saved, but he watched as she tried everything, as her hands shook with the effort, as she stayed awake into the small hours of the night trying to save one from the litter. Again, she knew he would be too intimidating, so he retired to bed only to hear her all night, her uncommonly soft voice begging for just a little more, bargaining in whatever way she could. When he heard her start to cry, he pulled himself from bed, padding softly to where she was, looming above her as she knelt and took her face into her hands, body contorting with soft sobs as if trying to let the emotion trickle out slowly rather than releasing it all at once. He knelt alongside her and came close to her, reaching out for her, letting her come into his arms, letting her be as close to him as she thought she needed to be. Though the morning afterward had been hard, there was something enchanting and comforting about how she would reach for him, about how he could make her breakfast and hope so greatly that she would eat, about how she would reach for him and for him to be near her as if such a thing were purely natural, something they’d always done. 

They only lost one kitten, the rest being given away at the market once they could be weaned. When he asked her why she didn’t wish to keep any, she explained that most of her cats were runaways, rejects, the ones left on the sides of roads or given away. Sometimes, those who were moving towns would bring their cats directly to her, knowing that she had many and that she would take in any and all; though she scoffed at such people, he knew there was something good in such arrangements, for she would’ve found such cats anyway, drawing them into her home, giving them a new and more beautiful name and asking them where they’ve come from as she feeds them fresh-cooked salmon and offers them a warm place to sleep. _I do wonder where all the kittens go,_ she told him, _but I’d like to think that they’re taken care of. That they’re loved. I do believe that they’ve been loved._

He takes off his shirt from gardening, haphazardly folds the sweaty mess up in his hands, watches as she does the same with her dress, but instead of holding the dress in her hands as she brings it inside, she lets it slip down onto the back porch where they stand, her sunglasses left on one of the chairs on the porch, her hat resting on the railing. She has dirt on her chin from leaning in too close, and her skin is slick with sweat, the warm, sunny day bringing redness to her arms, her body smelling of earth and sunscreen. Looking up at him, she has a clarity in her eyes, a warm blueness that reminds him of vast oceans, and he wants to take her to Nova Scotia, or to Newfoundland, or to the Bahamas, or to the Italian seaside. He’s seen every ring that the local jewelry store has to offer and found every single one inadequate, but he’ll surely find one by the end of the summer, somehow managing to excuse a trip to Boston without her. He wants to ask her by the ocean, somewhere wild and away from other people, somewhere that makes them feel as if they’re the only two beings in the world; he wants it to be just the two of them, and he wants her to be so happy that she’ll remember it for as long as she lives, and he wants it to be special even if he doesn’t know how to make life with her more special than it already is. Since she gave him the camera, they have put pictures of themselves around the house, frames hung above the fireplace, that first picture of them together kept on her desk in the upstairs study, a portrait together at a New Year’s party hung in the main room; she gave him her world, so it seems only right that he give her something representative of his in return, a proper gift, something she’ll wear with a sense of deep and unending fondness. 

And he drops his shirt too because he knows what she wants. It’s spring, and it’s getting warmer, and he kneels before her and waits for a command as she stands nakedly ahead of him, the sheen of sweat on her skin making her sparkle, her long braid haloed by the sun. 

He’s never been so happy for May to come.

* * *

During the first hour of the Saturday morning summer market, before the stalls start to get busy, he goes through each booth to find the weekly produce she needs, fresh kale and chanterelles for dinner, peppers for refrigerator pickles, basil sprigs for fermentation and tinctures. Because they need to pack certain products on ice anyway, he's better off having first pick at the market, and when he brings their groceries back to their booth - she’s sipping lion’s mane tea in a jar from the woman two stalls over, another witch who lives an hour’s drive away, the gesture loaded with meaning and ultimately friendly in nature - he tears off the edge of a mint leaf and gives it to her to chew.

Sales have been good already; she sold one of the two pies made from the strawberries they picked together on Thursday, and a couple of the bestselling tinctures - one for nausea, another for menstrual cramps - are already gone by the time he returns. Once the sun returned to their little state, she switched out her winter dresses and thick sweaters for her summer clothes, sleeveless long dresses and silk shawls, scarves for when it’s too hot to have her hair rest on the back of her neck, and she wears a dress that’s shimmery and blue like the northern Atlantic, dark and cool, little straps lining her pale collarbone. She’s self-conscious about her freckles, thinks they look childish. This season somehow makes her eyes look bluer. She keeps a her tattered copy of _The Secret Garden_ on her lap because she's hardly found time for reading this year. If it were appropriate, he would kiss her before he moved the cash box off of his seat and sat down.

The booths fill out the little plot of land the market is hosted on, and to their far left, in a little sectioned-off middle portion of the market, a lone guitarist sets up as the entertainment for the morning. When things get busier, people with dogs will walk around, children flitting to the musician to dance, parents craning their necks back while they wait to purchase produce. Each time a person approaches her, she’s attentive and explains things simply and clearly, going through her herbalist education and her methodology; when someone asks for a custom blend, she pulls one of many preprinted sheets of hers and writes down the specifics, the address and phone number for payment, an estimated pickup time, the route numbers to follow in order to find her home. Someone asks for catnip, does she have it? And she smiles and says no, that would be a problem in my home, but I hear someone two booths down has some, and they sew it into little kitten pillows to play with, complete with a bell, and personally, I’ve found that my cats love bells. When someone asks if she has more of that rosemary bread from last week, she frets and says no, her husband baked it and, she looks to him, he’s been slacking off this week, smug smile, she stands while he sits, and she holds all the power. 

But then, someone mentions the price of her raspberry leaf tincture. She furrows her brow, for the price has gone down recently because of the harvest. Instead of using dried leaves from last year, she’s actually been able to use fresh ones, and they’ve been so abundant that she almost has an excess of product. And then, he looks down to see that the raspberry leaf tinctures that they brought are all still there in their booth, unsold even after hours at the market. Strange, he thinks, for that blend is popular for women’s health, and a few local midwives even direct clients to her, saying that her blend is pure and practical and perfect for their needs. 

“All I’m saying is,” the person mentions, “the girl over there,” a point to the far left, “sells it way, _way_ cheaper. And it’s got this other stuff in it for better absorption. You might want to look into it.”

And they both look in the pointed direction to see a spry girl, early twenties, long brown hair pulled into a high ponytail with its end reaching the small of her back, the high waistband of her leggings flaunting a designer sports brand's logo. When she talks, she hops her heels up a little, and she moves her acrylic nails in vibrant, animated motions, rolling her wrists, cat-eyed makeup, fanned fingers. A city girl, he thinks, but a modern one, not like the ones from his days in cities. At the front of her booth, she flaunts a little chalkboard with fluorescent text, _Would you like to lose ten pounds by next week?_

At home, Bedelia takes a peach from the fridge and sinks her teeth deeply into it, juice bleeding onto her hand, and the intense furrow of her brows, along with the rage in her eyes, tells him that he shouldn’t ask how she’s feeling. When she trots out to the back porch, the cats follow her in one big group, lifting their paws cautiously and making no sound while she opens the back door and leaves them behind. 

_She’s just graduated with her master’s in _botany_,_ Bedelia spat on the ride home. _I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but in my day, we at least tried to cover up who we were. It doesn’t matter that times have changed; what matters is having respect for yourself and others, and she has no respect for the craft at all. She sells _diet pills._ Now, I’m not above giving a customer what they seek out, but _diet pills?_ I doubt they’re even enchanted. It’s probably just an herb that causes heart palpitations and amenorrhea, and it’s probably grown in a small, poor country but is still overpriced when she sells it. _Worst of all, this woman now lives above the general store on the main street in town, taking over one of the apartments upstairs. He asked her about territory among her kind, and all she could do was shrug and say,_ when people have common decency, you simply forget to establish a rule._

But at least he knows what quells her. Looking out the main room’s windows, he watches as she chews the peach down to the pit, then heads into the kitchen to start on dinner. Something savory tonight, lamb with butter and fresh herbs, mushrooms in a homemade gravy. Shooing one of the cats away from the record player on the windowsill - and, of course, picking up the amethyst and citrine crystals that the cat knocks over - he puts on a Tchaikovsky record and lights the stove. Though he can only see part of her from the kitchen window, he looks out anyway, one of her shoulders covered by a grey silk wrap, her hair in its long braid, her neck tense. 

On the way home, he prompted, _We could always-_

Of course, she cut him off immediately, said, _She’s a horrible person, and clearly a negligent witch, but we could never excuse doing _that_ to her._

_ I wouldn’t be unwilling. _

_ Well, _ I _would be. _

Though the conversation seemed to end there, she paused before saying that she ought to talk to the girl, one witch to another, establish boundaries of some kind. Despite how like young witches it was to overthrow their mothers and covens in favor of defying social convention - and despite how Bedelia had done much the same, though her circumstances had been far different - she knew that secrecy, kindness, and respect were the most basic tenets of her practice, and this girl clearly practiced none of those things. She kept going back to the weight loss, the ethics behind such a blend, and though she had made horrible things before, had killed and blinded with her own brews, she absolutely refused to create a product intended for weight loss.

_Why?_ he asked out of curiosity. To a degree he understood why, but he wanted to hear her reasoning beyond what he already assumed.

_ Because the desire for such a thing rarely stems from a place of wellness and instead comes from horrible friends, wretched husbands, people who deserve pain. And I don’t trust myself to not inflict pain on such parties. _

When she returns inside, he’s turning over the searing lamb, the mushrooms cooking in a cast iron on the other burner. She slips her arms around his hips, hugging him from behind, cheek to his shoulderblade, the top of her head brushing his neck, the Valse Sentimentale playing in the background. In the summer, their home is too hot, the windows open throughout in hope of a crossbreeze, but they’re content to live with the heat. He’ll make her lavender lemonade during the sweltering afternoons, bringing it to her while she works in the main room, watching the glass sweat while the cats eye it and wonder how much trouble they would be in if they knocked it over. Because their bedroom was too warm a few nights ago, they slept on mats on the back porch instead, curled close together and feeling the nighttime breezes on their exposed skin. Nowadays, she wears silk slips to bed, and he loves the way they feel beneath his hands, pawing at her hips, holding the small of her back. She mentioned a nearby pond last week, a place where they could swim together and likely never run into another person; they’ll head that way when she has a slow workday, spend the afternoon in the water, relax on the banks together. 

And when the season ends, they’ll make raspberry jam together and can it to sell, and they’ll ease back into autumn, the season when they met, and this time have that season together in full. They’ll put up decorations, carve pumpkins, roast vegetables in their seasonally neglected oven, bring all of her sweaters out of storage but hold off on the coats for now. Instead of watching from afar, this year he’ll help her make popcorn balls for the trick-or-treaters, and she’ll be dressed in a kind of uncostume again, but this time he’ll be beside her doing exactly the same. 

Turning around to face her, he looks down and sees that she’s calmed. He knows how coven - or, in this case, not even a coven but instead merely an individual witch - drama hurts her. She holds tightly to her ethics, and she’s built her life in an admirable way even if her parents never viewed her choices in that way; he understands the discomfort of watching someone take her well-crafted life and exploit it.

She hums in enjoyment, for even though he can’t feel the same way, what he’s cooking smells delectable, and she never really had lunch. 

“How was your peach?” he asks, and she scoffs, then comes around to his side, holds out her flat palm with the pit on top. 

“I could throw it through a window,” she says with a smirk that says _I could if I wanted to, but I don’t want to waste another moment on that girl._

Taking the pit from her hand, he pockets it, saves it in case her opinion changes.

“I’ve always hated your kitchen records,” she says, leaning against the counter, looking up at him. “Too slow. Too…_melodramatic._”

“Oh, _melodramatic,_” he repeats, reaching out for her hips, letting the lamb go for now.

He can’t count the number of times he’s burned her dinner because he wanted to kiss her, but now feels worthwhile. No matter what they spent on the meat, no matter how hard it could be to forage for chanterelles, he needs to kiss her, and he needs to feel her laughing against him, and he needs her to reach up and hold onto him, step on tiptoe in her little shoes, press her body against his. And to prove her wrong, he pulls away from her and takes one of her hands, then sweeps his other arm to the small of her back, and she gives him a look that he’ll choose to ignore, and insistently, he sways with her through the kitchen, dancing with her to a record she doesn’t like, the windows open wide, the cats jumping out of their way as she laughs. Even so many years after she stopped taking ballet lessons, she still spots her turns. He only stops once they’re in the entryway, out of the kitchen altogether, and by then, she’s short of breath, laughing as she pants, looking up at him with big blue eyes.

“I still don’t like it,” she says, and with that, he knows for sure that the lamb is going to burn.

* * *

At the Saturday market in August, she goes to the young witch’s booth while he mans their own. Because she’s had a slow workweek - the source for which is undeniably in front of Bedelia now, wearing her hair in a too-big bun and hopping around in designer sandals and palazzo pants - they’ve spent their time building stock for today, floating needles knitting hats in their main room, the cats trying to bat at the levitating balls of yarn. He has a few loaves of bread to sell, as well as two raspberry pies. Because the third pie fell apart - he tried a new kind of butter that didn’t want to crust - they have little samples at the edge of their table, just waiting for patrons to come by and taste. A few booths down is a dairy farm, and if they have any in stock today, then he can recommend that patrons pair this lovely pie with some of their fresh vanilla ice cream, so creamy and wonderful, perfect for a hot day in the summer. 

This week, Bedelia tied her hair back with a silk scarf and put on a long dress with a deep neckline and thin straps; she lets her silk wrap fall below her shoulders as she speaks briefly to the girl, wears a false smile and tries to stand taller than the witch in front of her as she passes the girl a wax-sealed envelope. Inside, there’s a handwritten note inviting her to dinner next Friday, should she like to come. The girl grows bubbly and twitchy, moving about as if too excited for words, then starts speaking in a way that makes Bedelia’s false smile wane. 

When she returns to the book ten minutes later, he asks, “What was that about?”

“She’s glad that there’s_ female solidarity_ among the witches here.” She rolls her eyes. “Apparently, her coven had been _so cliquey._ All of the women there disliked her boyfriend of the time, so she left.”

“Interesting.”

“It really isn’t.” She picks up this week’s jar of tea from the witch here she does like, takes a sip. “She’s a rebellious teenager who grew into a rebellious adult selling diet products. It’s despicable.”

“Was she intent on coming?”

Bedelia closes her eyes in annoyance, grits her teeth as she says, “Yes.”

“And?”

“She is a vegan,” she says. 

“What is a _vegan?_”

“No meat, no eggs, no milk.”

“You liked the Cyrus’ sweet potatoes last night. We could cook her those.”

“It shocks shocked that you’re not appalled.”

“What about ravioli with goat cheese?”

Bedelia sighs and puts away the topic, then transforms back into the false smile as clients come to sample the raspberry pie.

* * *

Though he claims he doesn’t like having her help him in the kitchen because he likes cooking for her alone, he watches the way she holds a knife and knows there’s another much deeper reason. A week ago, he sharpened that knife, so he knows how easily it could cut skin, how one misstep with the tomato she’s slicing would send him out the front door of the house and into the graveyard across the way, waiting there until the blood clots, waiting for her to come out on the porch with a finger wrapped in gauze and tell him that it’s okay if he comes back in now. While he can tolerate the old blood, the fresh kind makes him wince, gives him tunnel vision, makes him think horrible things. Still, she insisted on helping, for he has mushrooms to saute, yams to boil, pasta to roll out. Though it’s just dinner with a girl she hates, he’s made such an effort this week, sourcing farmer’s market tomatoes and fresh basil, crafting a fully vegan tortellini recipe through trial and error, feeding the cats his failures though said failures are often left untouched in their bowls. 

“This is a bit much,” she told him, but he seemed so naturally intent to please with food, so she wondered if she’d taken his cooking for granted, if he was once someone who had ravishing dinner parties and fed his guests so well. Of course, the meals he makes for her are delicious, but he doesn’t entertain her because he doesn’t need to, because she wouldn’t want him to. Maybe they could invite the other witch from the market over for supper sometime. Last week, that witch let slip that she has a teenage daughter whose boyfriend is a total bore, and though Bedelia is usually indifferent about gossip, she knows how valuable it can be to have a friend.

Now, she chops silently alongside him as the Habenara from _Carmen_ plays on her record player, skipping at a scratch on the vinyl. Morgana sits on the windowsill and stares out at the driveway, the graveyard, her tail flicking back and forth as if she’s preparing to pounce. In the main room, the other cats are growing restless, mewling at each other and padding across the furniture. The unrest in the house is palpable, and by the time that he’s folded each of the tortellini together, sauteed the mushrooms in fresh garlic and herbs, the source of that unrest pulls up onto their driveway, only it isn’t her car. No, this is one of those newfangled _rideshares_ that they kept seeing in Boston. She steps out, long black hair resting on her shoulder, using her cell phone to rate the driver three stars and forego a tip. When she reaches their porch, she knocks twice on the front door, and Bedelia opens quickly, all too quickly.

“Welcome,” she says, and then, to Hannibal’s surprise, she reaches out and hugs the girl, and to his even greater surprise, the girl hugs back as if they’ve been friends for years. “I’m glad you'll share dinner with us.”

“Oh, _definitely,_” the girl says. “Something smells _amazing_ in here.”

He can hear based on the creaks in the floorboards that the girl still bounces her heels when she talks. 

As Bedelia leads the girl into the main room, shows her around the house, Hannibal pours the tortellinis into a pot of boiling salted water, three minutes until dinner. The long days of the summer keep them well-lit into the evening, and the windows are open for a comfortable cross-breeze, white curtains billowing, not enough to cool the house down but enough to keep them comfortable. Bedelia introduces a few of the cats - the girl laments, _oh my god, that’s so many cats, you should totally make them an Instagram account_ \- and brings the girl out to the back porch, shows her the garden. _Oh, you grow all of your own stuff?_ the girl asks. _Honestly, you should just join the company I’m part of. They take care of the manufacturing and everything, and you get to be your own boss. You’d save _so_ much more time._ Politely, Bedelia declines, and he can picture it even without seeing the two, how the vein on Bedelia’s forehead pulses with suppressed anger, how her palms have started to sweat. As he drains the tortellini, he smiles smugly, wondering if they’ll even make it through dinner, let alone to dessert. 

He kept ceramic bowls warming in the oven, just one course because Bedelia said that would be plenty, and while he spoons pasta into the bowls, he commends himself, for this is a dish without any animal products that is nonetheless aromatic and flavorful. Of course, he wishes he could’ve cooked the butternut squash in duck fat, could’ve added chorizo to the mushroom ragu, but nonetheless, he went without a recipe - or even much of a sense of direction - and still made something delicious. Or, at least, he assumes it’s delicious.

“Oh my _God,_” the girl says after her first bite of the tortellini. “Holy shit. You _need_ to give me this recipe.”

Sitting at the daintily made-up kitchen table, Bedelia looks to him with annoyance, not because the food is bad or because he did a good job but because he, for reasons she’ll never understand, insisted on feeding their guest first. _This is a waste of our time,_ she kept telling him, but he wanted to feed this girl. He wanted to labor over her last meal. It would be wrong not to, wouldn’t it? To instead lure her to their house and pounce on her as soon as she walked through the door, her astute and unassuming figure letting out a blood-curdling scream, the cats hissing back in annoyance, it seemed so trite, so strangely evil. No, he would make the girl dinner first. He would be a good host and make the girl dinner first.

“My husband is a wonderful cook,” Bedelia deadpans as she stares at him with annoyance. _Of course you’re a good cook right now. Of course you chose today to be an especially good cook._

“Like, I’ve been vegan for five years now,” the girl says, then pushes her ponytail back over her shoulder, “and I swear, I’ve _never_ found decent vegan pasta. Especially not _homemade pasta._”

“Well,” Bedelia says, then picks up her glass of wine and leaves it at that.

In theory, they should have rehearsed this, but part of him is enticed by their unchoreographed dance, how they all genuinely eat dinner together, how the girl laments about how cliquey a coven can be.

“Legit, it’s _so_ freeing,” the girl says. “Like, I’m my own boss. I went to college 'cause my parents forced me to, but you really don't _need_ a degree to be successful; you just need to be good at business. And the market here on Saturdays? _Perfect._ People around here hear some kind of woo-woo bullshit and just eat it up. I could sell them water in a bottle, and they’d still buy it.”

Bedelia raises her eyebrows in disapproval but quickly drops them, trying not to give her thoughts away.

“I’ve always valued integrity and quality over status,” she says, piercing her fork through a mushroom.

“Yeah, well, that’s why you don’t have air conditioning.”

Giving a tight-lipped smile, Bedelia stands up, tries to ignore the statement as she says, “I’m going to top off my wine glass. Would you like more?”

“Oh, totally,” the girl says, passing Bedelia her glass. “This is way better than the Trader Joe’s two-buck chuck.”

He knows Bedelia has never paid only a few dollars for wine in her life. Because she wouldn’t tolerate cheap wine, she went through a beer phase during her undergraduate degree, then opted for whiskey while studying naturopathy because she could both drink it and use it to make tinctures. Though she may be well-acquainted with cheap beer and whiskey, she certainly isn’t with cheap wine. 

“So, what do you do for a living?” the girl asks him while Bedelia heads back to the kitchen counter, behind the girl, unseen by the girl. “Other than like, pies and whatever.”

He manages to smile at her naivety. Bedelia leaves both wine glasses on the kitchen counter, not planning on coming back to them. 

“I’m an architect,” he lies. “Once a week, I commute to the city.”

“So you, like, design buildings?”

“More or less.”

“So you’re probably good at art too.”

“Yes, very good.”

“Awesome, ‘cause I’ve been trying to find someone who does nude sketches,” she says.

Bedelia fingers the handle of a cast iron pan, steps barefoot over the kitchen floor, not making a sound. Ahead of her, the girl faces him and has no idea.

“You know, rebranding and such,” the girl says. “Sex sells, right?”

“I don’t know about that,” he says and dares not look at Bedelia’s reaction, “but I do love a nude portrait.”

“Do you take commissions?”

“I only do them of my wife.”

And then Bedelia swings, and with a crack to the head, the girl is down on the floor, her chair knocked over and her nose starting to bleed, and Bedelia forces in a deep breath, had been holding hers since she put her hands on the cast iron. Then, she checks the pan for dents and nudges the girl with her foot.

“In the end, you're technically the one who killed her,” he says as he crouches down onto the floor, pushes the girl’s head to the side at a more dramatic angle, shoves away her ridiculously long hair. 

Huffing humorlessly, Bedelia leaves the pan on the table, puts her hands on her hips, stares down at him.

“I don’t want her bleeding all over the place,” she says, and that’s enough permission for him to sink his teeth into the girl’s neck - heart still beating, but the brain injury would be enough to kill her in time - and drink from her. 

Every time, he loses his sense of himself. He forgets where he is, what he’s going, where Bedelia has gone, why he is in this place to begin with. In psychological terms, he’s heard it called _flow,_ and he feels a mild version of it when he’s cooking, when he’s sketching her, when he kneads bread, but this feeling is his true high, the greatest feeling he’s ever felt, something unparalleled and captivating. It’s better than a drug, for he has no shame in craving it. It’s better than a drug because, even when the subject is as anemic as this girl is, the indulgence is still just as sweet. With farm animals, sometimes even roadkill at particularly desperate times, the taste was menial, mediocre, satiating but never truly satisfying, but human blood is a delicacy, one he savors with gratitude.

And Bedelia bled for him when he needed blood most, siphoned from her own arm in a way he can’t remember because of the haze surrounding his hunger back then. The least he can do in return is exsanguinate her competition. 

When he pulls back, the girl’s skin is even paler than before, and her heart long ago stopped beating, and before he can take in his surroundings again, can see the folded sheet on the kitchen table and hear the sound of a car engine running outside, Bedelia is before him on all fours and pushing him into a kiss, the heel one of her shoes - when did she put on shoes? - crushing the dead girl’s wrist, her long cloak covering the girl’s face, and she’s fervent. She’s more than fervent. And though there’s no high like tasting human blood, this feeling, of having her body flush against his and her lips upon his own, of listening to the hot spurts of her breath, somehow manages to be a close second. And she holds him so long that he thinks she might take him right here on the floor, but then, she pulls back, stands up, and huffs out a breath as she unfurls the old sheet on the table, intent on wrapping up the body. 

“I’ll need help carrying her out,” she demands, then spits, “and make sure you get the cell _phone_.”

And the drive is rugged and rocky along dirt roads in the falling dark, and if he really listens, he can hear the body jostling around in the trunk with every bump he hits, and she’s touching him unwaveringly as he drives out to the pond she told him about, fingers beneath his belt, kneeling on top of her bag on her seat so that she can kiss his cheek, kissing his neck and biting with a little grin on her lips because she knows he finds that charming. By the time they make their way to the woods, night has swept over and darkened the town, and she lights a lantern with a snap of her fingers, and he carries the body - limp in his arms, the girl weighs nothing - while she guides their path, not following any trails, traveling in a memorized direction toward the small pond. Out here, no one will be able to find the body. Out here, no one will bother to look.

At the edge of the water, she drops the lantern along with her bag and insists on finding wood, on building a bonfire around the body, on burning the flesh until it’s unrecognizable, and they lean fallen trees together, throw kindling about their pile, no need for rocks at the edges, they could burn down the whole forest for all they care, and once the wood is stacked much taller than either of them, enough to send off a smoke signal on a bright day but not on a dark night like tonight, she goes to light the fire but stops herself.

“The _phone,_” she insists, looking at him with annoyance.

And he takes the girl’s cell phone from his pocket, then wedges it through the leaning wood so that it lands right on top of the sheet. And then she lights the fire.

For a moment, he steps back and just watches. In front of the bonfire, Bedelia is a silhouette of long hair and a cloak, a short woman before a blaze, unafraid of the flames, almost daring them to come touch her too. The water beyond the fire reflects the glow, smoke billowing out above the treeline, the smell of burning cotton and flesh starting to fill the air. By morning, there will be nothing left but ash, and he’ll never have to speak to a witch other than his own about nude portraits again.

And then Bedelia turns around, and that fervor is still in her eyes as she walks up to him, as she steps on tiptoe and takes his face in both hands so that she can kiss him passionately, and it’s still in her eyes as she forces him onto the moist ground of the forest, as she rips off his belt and undoes her cloak, as she sinks over him and forces him to realize that all night long she hasn’t worn anything beneath her dress. She takes him wildly, palms planted above his shoulders, back arched in ecstasy, and when he looks up at her, he sees her cast in the light of the flames, blonde hair shimmering, eyelashes suspended within the smoke, pale collarbone covered in her summertime freckles. Gripping her hips in his hands, he can feel every one of her ministrations, the tug of the muscles in her belly, the tension in her legs; she’s spent hours thinking about this, and now, it’s hers to take.

When they wind down together, she covers them both in her cloak, shoes kicked off, the fire continuing to burn down behind them. In the morning, they’ll deal with the mess, but for now, they curl up together, her warm breath against his skin, his leg nestled between hers, forgotten clothes strewn on the banks of the pond. Above and around them, it’s a star-filled summer night, and when he closes his eyes, he finds himself smiling.

* * *

When he wakes, he’s still naked but covered my her cloak; she’s so close to him that for a moment he can’t discern which are her limbs and which are his own. Though he remembers the night, the excitement and strain of it all, he can’t remember falling asleep like this, entwined with her, covered by clothes her size that leave his legs bare and dangling at their edge. The sun has risen, but only recently; she’s warm alongside him, still asleep, nose pressed against his shoulder, breaths haunting and sacred in their smallness. In front of them, there is a pile of ash, then the little pond, and in the trees above, birds are singing, greeting the day as it begins. Most likely, no one else in their little town is awake yet. His body is caked with dirt, skin almost blending in with the forest floor, and if she weren’t next to him, he would feel incomplete.

She wakes slowly, long lashes fluttering, the pace of her breaths changing; he clings to her involuntarily, asks her to stay a moment, to not disrupt the sacredness of right now. Around them, the rest of the world is so still, and it feels as if her slightest movement would disturb that, would wake everyone else, would bring others into this world of their own making. Because she always does, she understands, so she nestles in closer to him, closes her eyes, sighs out a deep breath. 

“In the pocket of my bag,” she says, tone soft and lazy, “there’s my book.”

With one hand, he can reach out and find the book, opting for touch instead of sight, and surely, here is her copy of _The Secret Garden,_ its old-fashioned binding tattered, her bookmark still in its place. Though the summer is almost over, her bookmark is stuck in an infinite spring. Her nose imprints on his shoulder, a vague and animalistic kind of kiss. Before they return home, she’ll give him a proper one, he knows that already, but he relishes in this little one, in the little bits of affection she offers. Though she’s gruff, she’s so gentle too, almost horrifically gentle, and he loves that gentleness, how she indulges the questions of children at the market, how she mourns so deeply for kittens she couldn’t save. He wonders if she’ll maintain her rule of no mud allowed in the house, if she’ll force them to bathe nakedly using only the garden hose and castile soap. He wonders how long it will take for him to wash the mud from her long hair.

He opens to her page and starts to read.

“'_You never saw anything so beautiful!_’” he begins, his voice low and quiet, not as exclamatory as the text requires. The sun feels warm on his hands as he holds the book. “_‘It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come, the Spring! Dickon says so!’_”

As he reads, he starts to feel which limbs are his, which are hers; she’s holding him more tightly, dirty palm to his side. He feels cold like dewy grass as the sun rises but warm like springtime rays down on the blades. 

“_’Has it?’ cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed. ‘Open the window!’ he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and half at his own fancy. ‘Perhaps we may hear the golden trumpets!’_”

Against him, she laughs softly, just a shift of her belly, a sound for only the two of them. 

“_And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a moment more it was opened wide and freshness and scents and birds’ songs were pouring through. ‘That’s fresh air,’ she said. ‘Lie on your back and draw in long breaths of it. That’s what Dickon does when he’s lying on the moor. He says he feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it.’_”

They lie together and breathe.

* * *

At the next Saturday morning market, she has her entire stock of raspberry leaf tinctures out on their table. She certainly expects to sell out, and because the berries are in season, she’ll be able to harvest more leaves for a new batch sometime soon. When they started setting up this morning, the witch two stalls over came offering peaches from her trees and a smile, clearly knowing what had happened, clearly content with the state of things; in return, Bedelia said she would give the woman a notecard with her husband’s chanterelle tortellini recipe written on it, along with some basil from her garden. It’s good, they both know, to have a friend with common interests.

And all morning, they watch as the girl’s patrons look for her booth and don’t end up finding it, then come over to Bedelia and ask if the price on her raspberry leaf tincture has gone down, and Bedelia smiles and says no, this is a high-quality tincture, the price reflects the time and effort spent planting, harvesting, and preserving. With autumn right around the corner, they’ve started selling handmade wool hats and mittens, raspberry crumbles and brioche buns, the tastes around them shifting from cold summer produce to all things warm and comforting. She writes down four different custom orders. When they’re down to just one raspberry leaf tincture, the woman who told her of the other girl’s lower prices comes up to the booth.

“Have you seen her anywhere?” the woman asks. “It’s odd for her to miss a market day.”

Bedelia smiles and shakes her head, says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And given that the woman seems to accept that statement without question, he knows that Bedelia is up to something. Erasure, that’s what it is, and he’s thankful for it. 

“I’m out of the raspberry leaf,” she says, then reaches into her wallet for a twenty-dollar bill, and Bedelia grins devilishly as she takes the cash and passes over the last bottle.


End file.
